The softer side of Gary Shteyngart

After writing three critically acclaimed novels, Gary Steyngart turned to memoir. Little Failure, published this month, is an unsparing, often funny, account of Steyngart’s anxiety-ridden life from his early childhood in Russia, through his family’s immigration to Queens, New York, and ending with the publication of his first novel. Our reading of the memoir raised some additional questions, which Shteyngart answered via email.

Letters from ‘the liberal conscience’

Arthur Schlesinger Jr. played a unique role in American life. The author of many acclaimed works of American history and biography (his accolades included two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, the Francis Parkman Prize and the Frederic Bancroft Prize), he also enthusiastically embraced the role of friend and confidant to significant movers and shakers on the national political scene. He was a speechwriter and adviser to presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson, and is probably best known for his position as a special assistant to President John F. Kennedy.

Lessons of love from the mother who left her behind

At the age of 84, Maya Angelou doesn’t have to write anymore. She has global fame as a poet, author and performer, as well as a professorship in American Studies at Wake Forest University. She has won three Grammys and a Presidential Medal of Arts, published two cookbooks, directed movies and appeared on “Sesame Street.” She...

A biography fit for a queen

It could be a fairy tale: a young German princess from a small principality is swept from obscurity to marry the heir to the Russian throne.Crowned Grand Duchess of Russia, showered with gowns and jewels, 15-year-old Sophia is renamed Catherine and baptized in the Russian Orthodox church. Despite having no blood claim to the throne, she...

Grizzard on Grizzard

EDITOR'S NOTE: For the past 10 years, Lewis Grizzard has annually produced a best-selling book. His ten titles have more than two million copies in print, and his latest book, Don't Bend Over in the Garden, Granny, You Know them Taters Got Eyes, has been on the New York Times best-seller list for weeks. In April, the first two in a series of...

Boom times

With The Greatest Generation, veteran NBC News anchorman Tom Brokaw shined a spotlight on the courageous and determined men and women who lifted America out of the Great Depression and defeated Hitler in World War II. The 1998 bestseller was embraced as a long-overdue tribute to the sacrifices of ordinary people beset by extraordinary...

The revenge of the credit card

Why money doesn't make us happy An editor for The New Republic and The Atlantic, Gregg Easterbrook is known as a keen observer of modern culture. So it's not surprising that he noticed a baffling quality in contemporary Americans despite our material wealth and relative well-being, a lot of us don't feel content. In his new book, The Progress...

Politics, Molly Ivins style: straight, no chaser

It has the subtitle Politics in the Clinton Years. Trouble is, in the week since first arranging to talk with newspaper columnist Molly Ivins about You Got to Dance with Them What Brung You, politics and Clinton both have done a wild 360, and neither Ivins nor anybody else knows if the truck stops here . . . or keeps on spinning.Brash, funny,...